Some progress, lots left: UN Climate Change annual report

The world is acting more to counter climate change, the United Nations said on June 7, 2019 in Bonn, Germany, ahead of the global climate change conference scheduled there for June 17-27.

The world showed readiness and determination to act on the issue, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa said as the international cooperation led by her released its annual report.

Espinosa praised the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for continuously supporting the “global climate platform that supports and encourages this progress”.

The report covered significant achievements and activities of the UNFCCC and the secretariat, especially, “particularly the impacts of those activities in support of the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement,” according to a UN Climate Change statement.

It underscored activities in support of the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement as particularly important. The report cited the Katowice climate package, through which the international community agreed on a host of norms last December to get the Paris Agreement going, as a major achievement.

At the same time, the release praises UN Climate Change itself for “efficiently supporting the negotiations and helping to establish the mechanisms for the Paris Agreement, measuring and analysing commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, and increasing the capacity of developing countries.”

The report also listed events to look forward to in 2019 that may help take international cooperation forward — regional events, dialogues, sessions to build capacity and meetings, culminating in COP 25 — the next conference of UNFCCC parties — in Chile next December.

Before that UN Secretary-General António Guterres will convene the UN Climate Action Summit on September 23.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the probable effects of temperatures rising by 1.5 Degree Celsius have made it clear that the “stepping up action has never been more urgent”, Espinosa said.